2012/04/20

logging

It has been brought to my attention that I can write posts here on practically anything that is closely or remotely linked to NetKernel and even IT in general. Today I want to discuss something with you that has been a thorn in my side for years. Logging.

Some 19 years ago, when I - fresh out of school - started in IT, I also started getting daily listings (on paper) with loggings. I would get an overview of the program-identifiers I requested, another list would be almost identical but contain file-identifiers and so on.

My listings were peanuts compared to the ones the old hands got. In fact, you could easily determine the status/position of someone by looking at the amount of listings with loggings he/she got. The higher the position, the higher the pile.

Many a lament of many a tree went unheard as it was cut down to support this habit. And of course, most of those listings got no more than a single glance before being thrown away.

IT grew up, companies became environmentally aware, I started doing database and system administration, paper listings had to go, mails and chats and log consoles ... replaced them. Until this very day I come in in the morning, take one look at the loggings and run to the toilet or the coffee machine (or both, order may depend upon the quality of the coffee).

Please, please, log as sparsely as you can : Why ? Overhead is overhead. Even if it is small.Why ? Storage costs money. Even if it is not a lot. Do you really want to have more loggings about your data (often repeating the data) than you have data ?Why ? Well, at the end of the day somebody has to look at all that data. And I've spend my share of nights sitting next to the console jockey (I was there for a rollout of something usually and ... I admit, they had better coffee than we had) wading through all kinds of messages popping up. I also sat next to the audit person going through one nights worth of database changes/logins/logouts to find the culprit of a certain rather clever (not so clever that I didn't notice) change on a top secret database.

NetKernel has a nice logging system. By all means check it out and use it. Logging in NetKernel is asynchronously and used in moderation will have a negligible impact on your application. Do spare a thought though for the poor human that will have to check them !